Thursday, September 11, 2008

A state election official said today a lawsuit by Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen would affect more than 1 million voters, four times as many voters as the Department of Justice had estimated.

Also today, critics accused Van Hollen - a Republican serving as the state co-chair of John McCain's presidential campaign - of filing the suit for partisan gain and trying to purge legitimate voters from poll lists.

Van Hollen sued the state Government Accountability Board Wednesday, saying it must crosscheck voter names with driver's license records for voters who registered to vote or changed their addresses on or after Jan. 1, 2006.

Such checks were required under federal law as of that date, but the board didn't start performing them until last month because of technical problems.

Nat Robinson, the board's elections administrator, said the board's reading of the suit is that the attorney general is asking local clerks to check the names of everyone who filed registration papers on or after Jan. 1, 2006 - more than 1 million people.

Department of Justice officials have said they want election officials to check only the names of those who filed paperwork by mail or with special registration deputies that work for volunteer groups. That would affect about 241,000 voters.

Election officials say either requirement would cripple efforts to prepare for the Nov. 4 presidential election because they don't have the staff to check so many names in the next eight weeks.

Also at issue is what would happen to those who fail the crosschecks. Board officials say it is common for voters to have data that does not match for innocent reasons, such as missing middle initials or mistyped driver's license IDs. One in five voters who registered to vote last month initially failed the data check.

[...]

State Sen. Jon Erpenbach (D-Waunakee) said as the highest-ranking elected Republican in Wisconsin, Van Hollen "should be careful not to use his office to try to undermine democracy. Bureaucratic failures should not deny someone's right to vote."

That all sounds familiar enough. A Republican flunkie in charge of an election trying to keep people from voting because they know they can't win otherwise.

But this is a real howler:

One Wisconsin Now, a group that has been criticizing McCain and other Republicans, said Van Hollen should step aside in the case because of his role with the McCain campaign.